B double E double R U N

I almost caved...to stress, to pressure, to searching for a resolution under time constraints...but I didn't.  It would have been the easy way out, yes.  But would I have taken the correct steps in helping to rectify the situation, no.  In fact, beer would have only made the situation worse, and deep down I knew that.  I just had to take time, sit down, and sort through all of my feelings and thoughts.

When a loved one is put into a potential dangerous and harmful situation, for me, there is nothing I wouldn't do.  Literally.  Although I can not go into any detail about the events, just take a moment to think about your worst fears coming true.  And those fears directly affecting your best friend, the one person you love more than any thing in the world.

Anger is my achilles heal, which I will discuss more in another blog.  It is typically my first response, my first reaction, if you will, to a situation in which a friend's well-being is threatened.  I have battled with anger for the majority of my life.  Let me define my anger for you.  First, it is not linked in any way to frustration.  Missing a lift is frustrating, cleaning up after people at work is frustrating, forgetting to dry your work clothes is frustrating.  For me, anger is an emotion that occurs like the flip of a switch, some times resulting in irrational responses such as punching the closest inanimate object, to uncontrollable tears and trembling hands.  Other times, clinching my jaw so much that it hurts the next day.  The majority of the time, I get blind-sided by my anger.  I am a very laid back person by nature, but when a certain button gets pushed repeatedly, I let it build up, although I have no feelings of it building up, and it ends in a grand explosion.  It is all a very quick process.  How long does it take your vehicle to go from zero to sixty?  That is how my anger works.

For example, years back I was with three friends at a bar playing pool.  Three chicks sat down at a table close to the pool table, and immediately started making rude comments about my friends.  Granted we were an odd four-some...two of us in workout clothes and two in business suits, with an age difference of about 10-12 years.  One chick would not stop with her comments, just loud enough for me to hear.  Before anyone else knew what was going on, I threw my pool stick on the table, leaned down in her face, and asked her what the fuck her problem was.  I told her to fucking stand up if she wanted to say anything else, and before I knew it her 5'4" boyfriend was in my face...or chest rather.  Her boyfriend, the bouncer, told me to leave.  I insulted her and her boyfriend a few more times, turned and punched the back of a chair, knocking almost everything on the table to the floor, and headed for the door.  Once outside, I threw a handful of quarters into the parking lot and then drove home...cooling down on the way.

Last weekend my protective nature leading to an explosion of anger was exposed again.  This time I had no control of the situation, and once I began to put the pieces together that lead to a very unexpected outcome, my car door paid the price.  And then my tires, as I peeled out of the parking lot like some teenager showing off a newly discovered talent.  During moments like this, my first thought is that beer will help.  I actually went as far as to pull off at a gas station with the intention of purchasing beer.  And it wasn't a moment of rationality that stopped me...it was, instead, the tears streaming down my face.  Hell, I can't expose my soft side in public! :)

This day ended with a good outcome, partially because there always seems to be someone out there slapping me in the back of the head when I face moments like these, and partially because of the support system that surrounds me.  If it were not for a great friend from Dallas and one man that cares more about people than making a shit ton of money, I am not sure where I would be or what would have happened.  As far as my anger goes, it is something that I work on every day...to understand and control.  And if you read this far, don't worry, it is highly unlikely that you will ever see me explode...most people haven't.

the Unexpected...Food

It has been almost 18 months since my last beer.  Now days, I eat pretty much whatever I want (aka Big Red Zero and Chunky Chips Ahoy) and work my ass off in the gym.  However, during my first few weeks of sobriety, I encountered something that I did not plan for...one of the unexpected aspects of sobering up.     

To abruptly deprive my body of the only thing that it knew, Mr. Barley and Ms. Hops, was quite an adjustment, mentally and physically.  Just like any other addict, in the first few days, I fought off the shakes, I felt sick, I slept hours on end, I drank gallons of water…but once I was back on my feet, the one thing I was not prepared for was learning how to eat again.  Beer was my most substantial source of nutrients (just the idea that beer, in massive amounts, is nutritious makes me laugh), but as I began the first week of my journey, I had no real interest in food.  No food, no calories, no energy…this was not a good thing.  So began the process of finding food that was enjoyable. Those I consumed in excess with beer, I no longer craved.  In fact, I recently had a Reese’s peanut butter cup again…trust me, I ate it…but really didn’t enjoy it like I used too.  I lost my appetite for a lot of different things, especially things that were salty.  

Once I figured out what to eat, along came the challenge of how much to eat.  At first, I would not eat enough to sustain me for even one full hour.  What I forgot to consider:  I had been consuming a minimum of 3000 calories a day in beer, plus whatever food I did eat, so now I always felt as if I was starving.  After six months of trial and error, I finally found my best eating schedule along with quantity and type of foods to get me through a full day (mind you I never said it was all healthy or good for me).  

My first few months, I found that eating a family sized breakfast was the way to go.  I would wake up starving in the mornings, and since I work fairly early, it would be the only way to get me through most of my shift.  I would follow that up with a sandwich for lunch and a decent sized dinner.  I eventually found that adding a protein shake to my morning routine helped immensely and my breakfast platter turned back into a plate.  My body has since adjusted to this new way of life, and I still eat a good breakfast and dinner.  But mid-day is more a series of snacks rather than a full lunch.  I now find myself eating something around 9 or 10am, 2pm, and 5pm...followed by dinner at 7-8pm.  I will refrain from telling you what I do eat because I don't want someone to try my "diet" and end up gaining fifty pounds.  What I will tell you is that it works for me! 

And yes, to all those diet gurus out there, I may be, according to your way of life, killing my body by eating processed foods.  BUT guess what...we breathe the same crappy air, most of us shop at the same grocery store or something similar, and with the crap that is shipped out of China, you probably don't know what your eating either.  So, I will happily enjoy my cookies, pop-tarts, and waffles...and still kick some ass in the gym! :))

Blinders

When your drunk all the time, you lose sight of what your loved ones see you go through every day. Just like the ponies at the track that wear blinders, you have one sole purpose: to strategically get from one drink to the next without distraction.  Most of my excessive drinking was done at home, especially the worse it got.  But on the days that I had to be somewhere, I had already mapped out convenient stops along the way to refresh my beverage of choice and consume most of it in my car. 

One thing that it is important to note is this: I was a lifelong drinker.  So when I did go out to eat or chill at a bar, it was not uncommon for me to go through 12-18 beers at one sitting and be able to walk out like I was sober.  That was just average for me.  At my worst, I would wake up in the morning and finish a six pack for breakfast.  Or I would mix a vodka drink in a 32oz plastic cup, and be on my second one in a matter of minutes. 

However, as a functioning alcoholic, people that do not see you on a daily basis rarely have any inclination as to how bad it really is.  Any addiction is a cause for concern to someone close to you, if they know it IS truly an addiction, but talking to an addict about how much they consume can go in one ear and out the other pretty easily...especially if they are functional throughout the day.  But when you see those words in writing and truly feel what they were or are also feeling...well, then it becomes something different.  For me, it was more of an eye opener as to how bad things really were. 

After losing my job as a collegiate Head Basketball Coach:
“She sat on the couch for six months and drank.  She was not drinking beer though; instead, she was drinking vodka along with other hard liquor.  After six months of that I told her to get off the couch and get a job.  She resented me for making her do it.” 

Once I admitted that I felt like my body was shutting down (at this point, about once a month or so I would be so sick that I wouldn't get out of bed for days at a time...but as soon as I felt better it was right back to drinking): 
“…she began to experience high levels of anxiety and physical illness.  She soon became a person I did not even recognize.  I kept trying to convince her to get some help.  I knew of a therapist who dealt with alcoholism, and I tried to connect them on more than one occasion.  But, she was not ready for help.”

Approximately six months prior to hanging up the bottle:
“(She) was just not getting better, mentally or physically.  She started to miss work regularly, and I would literally drive home from school wondering if I would find her dead or alive.  I was worried that the combination of her physical and mental condition was serious enough to take its ultimate toll on her, or that she just might take her own life.”

Clean and sober:
“(She) has been the biggest inspiration to me, as she has now been sober (with no relapses) for 15 months.  Her internal strength provides the foundation for my will to stay sober.  I also never want to let her down or cause her to relapse. “

Personally, I like the last one the best.

I Should Be Dead

I guess that pretty much goes without saying.  I spent 27 years drinking and 23 of those years drinking and driving.  But in my last 8 months or so of drinking, I could tell my body was shutting down on me.  I no longer even liked the taste of beer or alcohol.  I only drank it because that is what I knew...that is how I escaped from my problems.  That was how I lived.

I remember several friends and I were at Wurstfest.  After a couple of pitchers of beer, I broke down crying.  I couldn’t hold back any longer.  I felt like shit.  I looked like shit.  And I knew if I didn’t quit soon, I would be dead.  End of story.  At the same time, I did not know how to cope without alcohol.  My coping skills had stopped developing right about the time I started drinking.  In a sense, I skipped those years of my life.  So, my lack of coping skills carried me through another five months before I actually quit. 

Those months were horrible.  I was drinking from sun up until sun down and would get up in the middle of the night to drink more.  I kept count of beers left in the fridge so that I would have enough for over-night drinking as well as a six pack for the morning hours.  If I didn’t have the correct amount, I would make late night beer runs to get another 18 pack or case.   

I never slept more than a few hours a night and when I did sleep, I had horrible nightmares.  I also had anxiety issues when it came to simple things like showering and leaving the house.  My anxiety attacks got so bad that more than once I thought I wasn’t going to live to see the next morning...or the next five minutes for that matter. 

After work, on the days that I made it to work, I would make a mad dash over to the liquor store next door to get a cold six pack of 16oz beers.  It would make me physically ill to go into the store as well as slamming the first one to get my buzz back.  I was always forced to eat something with a lot of flavor to get the first one down.  But once that buzz came back, all was back to “normal”. 

I was becoming a recluse of sorts due to my drinking.  I couldn’t go anywhere without being drunk.  And if I was the least bit sober, I would get physically ill.  There were many times that I would be at my favorite bar/restaurant, order something, and then not be able to eat it.  At this point, I was starting to get bad stomach cramps that would hit me out of the blue...but became more frequent as the days went on.  So in my infinite wisdom, I decided that food was no longer a necessity as long as I had beer or a bottle of vodka.  It was the same wisdom that led me to believe that drinking all night and day was “normal”.  Any and all rational thinking at this point was drowning in alcohol. 

pretty much sums it up!

 

Supply and Demand

In order to get a perspective of my life as a drunk, it is important to understand the quantity of alcohol I consumed throughout my life as well as how it increased dramatically over the years.  As a kid 11 years of age, when I was first introduced to the ultimate hideout from  all problems, I would drink one to two wine coolers.  It was typically on the weekend when my mom and I were chilling at home.  It became such a wonderful and desirable feeling to me that I would occasionally sneak to the pantry for one during the week.  This was usually due to a fight between my parents, getting into trouble, or some other undesirable that I wished to hide from.  By the time I was in high school, I had freedom in the form of a Pontiac Grand-Am, my first vehicle.  My alcohol consumption by this time, and you are only looking at a four year difference, had increased to one 750ml bottle of vodka during the week and one for the weekend.  I also picked up smoking consistently during this time period, Marlboro 100’s in the soft pack. 

When I first started drinking, the wine coolers were purchased by my mom.  But as I increased my consumption, I had to hide my purchases.  So where did the money come from?  I was given a weekly allowance and gas money like a lot of kids, but my drinking typically exceeded the money I was given for the week.  There were times when I would do extra chores for five bucks a pop, but on numerous occasions, I would “borrow” twenty to forty bucks from my mom’s stash.  She used to keep a large sum of money in a white envelope on the right side of the second dresser drawer.  My mom did not keep track of her allowance thus providing me with plenty of opportunity to collect drinking funds.

During high school, partying in the form of drinking happened just about every weekend.  So, the consumption of alcohol also increased.  The bottles of vodka got bigger and I began incorporating bottles of cinnamon schnapps.  The cinnamon flavor replaced the gum cover-up and you could keep your buzz.  Awesome!  Summer time meant pool parties and gallon, yes gallon, daiquiris…with extra shots of course.  And while purchasing the gallon size beverage, why not have some cherry bombs while you wait…or jello shots.  Daiquiri Express, or the round building as we called it, became a primary location for obtaining anything buzz worthy.  The generic styrofoam containers that held the smaller daiquiris could pose as a soda from almost any joint in town.  Needless to say, they accompanied me to school on occasion and even sports trips.  I know what you are thinking, how did you get around the drinking age and being ID’ed.  In Louisiana, the legal drinking age was 18.  So as long as you had someone in your group that was of age, anything could be purchased.  It also helped that when you became a regular at certain places, they no longer asked for identification.  This included bars, liquor stores, and of course the round building. 

By the time I was “of age”, I was already known at most places around town.  I had one bar that I would frequent for happy hour that included $1 and some change screwdrivers.  Another bar had the best long island ice tea in town and when craving something sweet and mild, an amaretto sour would do the trick.  This place also had plastic cups that you could take home.  I had such a large collection in the back seat of my car, I had to start throwing them away.  Its just like leaving a festival with a stack of cups, except these were of the sixteen ounce variety. 

So basically, by the time I finished high school I was drunk pretty much all the time.  I was stealing money from home to cover my purchases.  Driving drunk was an art and acting completely  sober in front of people was a profession.  I had already become a high functioning alcoholic.